With our Earth’s tectonic plates ever-shifting, earthquakes have occurred as a result, which can have immediate and long-term impacts on people’s life. Magnitude, as one of the determining factors of the earthquake level, may indicate how much energy is released during the earthquake. The magnitude of the earthquake might fluctuate depending on the level of the tectonic plate impact [1]. Just as the structure of the Earth is changing, earthquakes may also be changing at different rates or in different ways at various locations in the world.
Some studies show that large earthquakes greater than 8.0 in magnitude have increased slightly since 2004 [2]. Hence, we are wondering if the average magnitude of the significant earthquake also increases statistically significantly before and after 2004. In this report, we are looking at the potential relationship between the magnitude of the earthquake from the time frame 1965-2003 in comparison to 2004-2016. We are hypothesizing that the earthquakes’ average monthly magnitude from 1965 to 2003 is statistically significantly different from the average monthly magnitude from 2004 to 2016.
We are examining earthquakes, ranging from 1965 to 2016 with a magnitude of 5.5 or higher, that were recorded by The National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC). This data was made available to us thanks to the seismographic network that recorded the vibration energy released by the ground at each seismic station.The database is available for free downloading on Kaggle [3].